How to Keep Your Enrollees Hooked to Your Online Courses

Creating a value-packed online course and marketing it effectively is one thing, keeping your students “hooked” to your course is another.

I know for a fact that there are a lot of online instructors that struggling with this challenge. And the worst part is, it isn’t that easy to remedy either. I know this to be true because just like my community of digital marketers and content developers, I too have a handful of online courses that I enrolled to, yet I haven’t completed yet.

If you’re struggling with making your online courses “stickier”, then allow me to share with you some tips to help you with just that.

Let’s hop right in:

1. Make your content relatable.

There are a couple of ways that you can make this happened. However, for the most part, talking about your students’ problems would usually do the trick.

The more you rub their problems to their faces, the more they’ll want to read because they will want to hear how you’ll propose to solve their problems and make their lives better.

Have you ever wondered why “life-hack” type articles tend to get shared countless times on social media sites? It’s exactly because of that reason. Because the audience can relate to what is written in the post, they end up wanting to devour every line in the article. Of course, when they realize that your material is value-packed, they’ll share it with their community as well.

2. Ask them questions.

This strategy will work best if you take the time to get to know your audience first. That’s why buyer personas are such a goldmine. Not only does it help you create a product that your audience will love, but it also helps you create a marketing strategy that best captures your audience’s attention.

Why am I talking about buyer personas, though?

Simple.

That’s because before you decide to follow the strategy of asking your audience’s questions, you need to have a clear idea of what their struggles are.

Simply asking them random questions won’t cut it. You need to ask them questions that they can relate to. Otherwise, you’ll just be wasting space in your online course.

Imagine having an online course about how to freelance online where the audience you’re targeting are the newbie freelancers — those who are oblivious about how the entire thing works.

You then ask them a question at the beginning of your curse saying, “Are you wondering which platform you should focus on to look for clients?”

As you can probably imagine, the sample question we asked is relevant to the audience. Simply because there are bajillions of places online where they can fish for jobs, yet they aren’t certain which platform will give them the best results.

As soon as they read the question, they’ll know that you know exactly what they’re going through. It sends them the right message. It tells them that you have a clear understanding of what their situation is, and you’re about to help them with it.

3. Ask them to interact with you.

Don’t just ask once, keep on dropping the call-to-action on several chapters of your online course where it makes sense.

Here’s the thing, there are times when your students need help with understanding what they’re reading. It isn’t realistic for you to expect that they’ll fully understand what you’re teaching in your course, even if you’ve tried your hardest to write everything in layman’s terms.

If you’ll ask them to interact with you by joining your Facebook group, or straight up ask them to send you an email, then they’ll have someone to turn to if they’ll have questions about your course.

This is important because other students would just stop going through the entire course if they find a couple of areas in the material that are hard to understand.

If you’ll give them a means to interact with you, however, then they can simply ask you if they have any questions. This makes the learning process for them easier, plus you’ll also manage to build your own community of like-minded individuals that you can monetize on later, or build relationships with.

4. Use different forms of content.

You can use charts, images, videos, or infographics. Do not limit yourself to thinking that you should only use text-based content.

You can even use webinars if you’d like to. Webinars make it easier for you to build relationships and familiarity with your audience. Imagine running a weekly webinar for everyone who enrolls in your course.

You can tell your audience to read chapters 1 – 5 within the week, then you’ll all meet in a webinar to discuss the chapters. This makes it the perfect time for them to ask you questions, share their success stories (or frustrations), or for everyone to empower everyone.

When you have an online course as amazing as this, then your audience will have a better understanding of your materials since you’re taking the time to meet with them in a webinar every week.

5. Add humor to your course.

You can use Memes, Gifs, or you can share one-liner jokes that would make them snicker.

Sprinkle these in your course, and you’ll have them craving for each succeeding lines of your course.

Humor is important because it gives your online course a “light” feel to it, making it easier for your students to digest the ideas.

When you deliver one-liner jokes, your students will tend to have a positive state of mind while consuming your materials. This makes the learning process a bit more pleasant for them. This will result in them having a better stamina when consuming your materials.

What’s next?

What are some of the tips that you can share with our community of online instructors when it comes keeping their students enrolled in their online course?

Please take the time to share your ideas in the comments section below. Cheers!